Spring 2026 Circle Back with Catherine Gilmore | Ep. 225
Sarah's Bookshelves Live
Sarah Dickinson
4.7 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 20 May 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In Episode 225, Sarah and Catherine of Gilmore Guide to Books catch up on the 12 new releases they shared in the Spring 2026 Book Preview, now that they've read them — or at least tried to! They share their reading stats and discuss which books worked and which didn't…and why.
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CLICK HERE for the full episode Show Notes on the blog.
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Here's how to access it:
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Highlights
- This time last year, Catherine was rocking a 100% success rate — this year's was "armageddon"
- Sarah had really successful spring with one 5-star book and only 1 DNF with a total average star rating of 4.15.
- They name their best and worst books picks for spring!
Books We Read Before the Preview
April
Sarah's Pick
- The Midnight Show by Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [3:07]
Spring 2026 Circle Back
April
Sarah's Picks
- Into the Blue by Emma Brodie (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [8:33]
- Leave Your Mess At Home by Tolani Akinola (April 14) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [16:27]
Catherine's Picks
- American Fantasy by Emma Straub (April 7) | Amazon
| Bookshop.org [5:45]
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [12:25]
- Like This, But Funnier by Hallie Cantor (April 7) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [19:23]
Other Books Mentioned
- All the World Can Hold by Jung Yun (2026) [7:59]
- The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985) [14:24]
- August Lane by Regina Black (2025) [16:32]
- Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (2021) [16:39]
- Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino (2025) [20:24]
May
Sarah's Picks
- The Mediator (Max Ringo, 1) by Robert Bailey (May 12) | Amazon
| Bookshop.org [22:10]
- The Burning Side by Sarah Damoff (May 19) | Amazon
| Bookshop.org [29:39]
- Returns and Exchanges by Kayla Rae Whitaker (May 19) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [39:25]
Catherine's Picks
- The Liar's Playbook by Leslie Bradford-Scott (May 5) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [25:20]
- The Last Mandarin by Louise Penny and Mellissa Fung (May 12) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [34:35]
- The Tapestry of Fate (Amina al-Sirafi, 2) by Shannon Chakraborty (May 12) | Amazon | Bookshop.org [41:16]
Other Books Mentioned
- The Boomerang by Robert Bailey (2025) [22:17]
- Nowhere Girl by Cheryl Diamond (2021) [26:30]
- The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff (2025) [29:43]
- Culpability by Bruce Holsinger (2025) [33:24]
- The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, 1) by Shannon Chakraborty (2023) [42:06]
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Sarah's Bookshelves Live. I'm your host, Sarah Dickinson. Join me every other week as we get real, |
| 0:15.9 | and sometimes a bit snarky about books and reading. Let's get rolling. Welcome to the Spring |
| 0:21.6 | 26th Circleback episode, where we discuss books we shared in the spring preview now that we |
| 0:27.6 | have had a chance to read them, or at least attempted to read them. Catherine is joining me, |
| 0:32.5 | as usual for these episodes. Hi, Catherine. Hi. How did your spring reading turn out? I don't want to be hyperbolic, |
| 0:40.7 | but the word Armageddon comes to mind. It kind of fell off a cliff compared to last year, |
| 0:49.8 | which was 100%. Look, you were going to go down from that number anyway. That's true. |
| 0:56.2 | But Sarah, to fall the 33% out, that's a little startling. It was a very rude awakening after |
| 1:05.6 | I just had 88% success this winter. And, you know, when I tried to figure out what it might be, |
| 1:13.0 | I feel like I came up with, I'm moving or I seem to be stuck in turbo-critical mode. |
| 1:19.8 | What is turbo-critical? I hate everything. |
| 1:22.5 | Okay. |
| 1:23.7 | No matter what genre, even the genres I like, my expectations are really high for what I need to be entertained and pay attention, which kind of means that I'm going to sound like a right royal bitch for this entire episode. |
| 1:43.0 | Were any books outside of your preview picks working for you? Good question. |
| 1:50.2 | Not really. Okay, so you just had a bad season overall. Yes, I did. Okay. Yeah. So, yeah, |
| 1:57.8 | that's the long answer. You gave the short answer, which is perfect. How about you? |
| 2:03.4 | Well, I was sort of the opposite of you in the sense that what worked best for me this spring were actually my preview books and not much else. |
| 2:13.5 | Oh. Yeah. Okay. All right. And not fully across the board, but I had one five star read. I had two four and a half star reads and I had one D&F and then I had two that were like more sort of okay kind of books. All right. But my average star rating for the books I finished was 4.15. I'll take that. Yes. And my |
| 2:38.1 | spring reading was a big improvement over last year where half of my picks were DNFs. Right. Right. |
| 2:44.5 | I mean, yes, you and I were exact opposites. Yeah. Well, we kind of are again. Totally. Yeah. Look, at least we're balancing |
| 2:53.8 | each other out. I was just going to say, at least one of us isn't going to be a total Debbie Downer. |
| 3:00.1 | Yeah. But anyway. All right. Here's how we'll do this. We each shared six books in the spring preview. |
... |
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